WSAV (NBC) and ESAV (CW), located in beautiful and historic Savannah, Georgia, has an opening for a highly motivated and experienced News Director with a proven track record of success.

Home to history, diverse culture, period architecture and ghost stories, market #90 serves fresh coastal cuisine and boundless opportunity for a driven leader who understands the critical need for relevant local news, weather, entertainment and sports content on multiple platforms.

WSAV provides more than 36 hours a week of locally produced news. Our website, WSAV.com along with our mobile news and weather apps are constantly updated with new and exclusive content as part of our digital-first strategy to drive audience growth on all platforms.

This opportunity, hosted in Georgia’s oldest city, will report directly to the General Manager while working closely with other Department Heads to deliver on the station’s strategic goals for audience growth and overall excellence. We are looking for a dynamic and energetic leader who will coach our team to consistently deliver on the promise of our On Your Side brand of local and regional journalism. Doing so will allow our marketing team to promote and clearly delineate the difference in our newscasts and digital content vs. our competition to create a compelling reason to make WSAV their station of choice. 

A successful candidate must have excellent journalistic, editorial, communication and leadership skills. We are looking for someone who is innovative and takes pride in winning every big story and major event and by doing so builds on our station’s proud legacy of award-winning journalism and local content. WSAV News 3 has been honored with 27 Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards and 1 National Murrow Award, a Regional Emmy Award and more than 70 awards for outstanding journalism from the Georgia Associated Press and 16 awards for outstanding journalism from the Georgia Association of Broadcasters.

The News Director leads and supervises all aspects of news, weather and sports programming production.

• Manages all aspects of the News Department (other than Production)
• Plans and manages staffing, training, and performance evaluations for the News Department.
• Makes decisions regarding hiring, evaluation, promotion and termination of employees.
• Develops news coverage strategy for the station and its website.
• Critiques newscasts daily to correct errors, improve coverage and provide mentoring feedback to news staff.
• Assigns projects to staff and verifies that deadlines are being met.
• Ensures achievement of viewer rating goals.
• Determines programming and evaluation of equipment needs to produce quality programming.
• Responds to coverage questions.
• Works with other senior station leaders to establish and reach station goals.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Requirements & Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and work-related experience.
• Fluency in English.
• Excellent communication skills, both oral and written.
• Minimum five years’ experience in news programming production, with at least two years’ experience in a leadership role. (More or less depending on market size.)
• Experience guiding, directing and motivating subordinates, including setting performance standards and monitoring performance.
• Experience establishing long-range objectives and specifying the strategies and actions to achieve them.
• Ability to identify the developmental needs of others and to coach, mentor or otherwise help others to improve their knowledge or skills.
• Experience preparing and maintaining departmental budgets.
• Proficiency with computers, telephones, copiers, scanners, fax machines and other office equipment.
• Ability to meet deadlines, prioritize assignments and handle multiple tasks simultaneously.
• Ability to effectively listen to fully understand employee needs and communicate with a team to shape a solution.